Last night I watched The Barber of Siberia until 1 a.m. before going to sleep. My mom said a friend recommended it — a really good film.
Jeanne could have had a beautiful romance, but precisely because she made her living by deceiving people, misunderstandings piled up and complications multiplied. In this way, she unwittingly caused Andrei to accumulate more and more jealousy, until finally it spiraled out of control. Andrei’s jealousy drove him to do a series of things that would shape his entire life. Hot-blooded and young, he challenged a classmate stronger than himself and ended up badly wounded. When Jeanne whispered to the general to plead on his behalf, in his eyes it became an insult and a provocation from the general. In the end he attacked the general with a piano wire, was exiled to Siberia, and ruined his own future.
Jealousy, possessiveness — the weaknesses of human nature, the punishment of impulse.
Jeanne married her employer to get a Siberian passport — truly unscrupulous. And at last she got her wish and set off for Siberia.
See, love makes people lose their heads. But it’s okay to do foolish things. Fate and time are always just, and the judgment of cause and effect is always irresistible. When all of this turns to dust, what can you say? You deceived people, you were jealous, you flew into a rage — weren’t you just playing yourself all along? Of course, Jeanne’s job was to deceive people, so she wasn’t wrong to deceive — but even without right or wrong, you’re still bound by cause and effect, and there’s no resisting it.
Ten years of entanglement, and a young, handsome officer became a weathered forest ranger. Ten years of searching, and at last she reached the place where Andrei lived after his sentence ended. Twenty minutes of exploring, and once again she missed him in a daze, finally realizing she had come too late. Everything from those ten years was wiped out in the instant she got her answer. She opened the music box, looked at the photograph, and ten years of memory collapsed just like that. All the people, all the events, and the ten years of waiting at any cost — all of it settled into those twenty minutes.
It takes ten years of karma to share a boat crossing, a hundred years to share a pillow in sleep. Swindlers never come to a good end, and romantic luck is always ruined by one’s own hand. Attitude determines destiny. Only sincerity keeps complications from multiplying. Where there is a beginning of affinity, there will be an end of affinity — and if what you do wounds morality and justice, the day your affinity ends will come all the sooner. Believing in love is useless; practicing compassion is enough.
Life is truly precious, but love is worth even more. Though body and bones be shattered without a care, affinities gather and scatter, and another ten years pass.
8.22: Last night I watched Duplicity, and it was really great. Compared to The Barber of Siberia, it suits my taste much better. Super rational! Yeah, only love that hasn’t lost its reason can stand up to scrutiny. Watching Duplicity, by the end I was silently crying out, “So satisfying.”